


i am a poster girl with no poster (i am 32 flavours and then some)

by Milzilla



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/F, Genderbending, basically canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-24 23:28:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20022775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Milzilla/pseuds/Milzilla
Summary: alex is seventeen and she’s going to graduate and she’s going to go away and make music. nothing can change that.





	i am a poster girl with no poster (i am 32 flavours and then some)

**Author's Note:**

> for rnm week. prompt: free day!

Alexandra Manes is seventeen and she wants to make music. The stretchers in her ears are thicker than her black eyeliner, her Ani Difranco t-shirt as much of a statement as the piercing through her tongue. She’s already a disappointment to her father by virtue of being a girl instead of a fourth boy, so the fact that she’s gay is really just the cherry on top of a second-rate cake. Her ability to beat the shit out of any of the boys at her school may have been an attempt to compensate for that. At least, that’s what she lets people think. In reality it’s because her nature as the “fairer sex” doesn’t protect her from Jesse Manes’ wrath.

Alex is seventeen and she’s going to graduate and she’s going to go away and make music. Nothing can change that. 

Not Michael Guerin and her surprisingly talented fingers on Alex’s brother’s guitar in the quiet of her father’s shed. Not the soft way that Michael presses her hands against Alex’s face in the UFO Emporium, or the way her chapped lips brush against Alex’s wet mouth. Not the way she smiles and answers Alex’s question with “not with anyone I’ve liked as much as I like you,” and then strips her of her clothes like she can’t bear to not be touching her. Not the way Michael presses hot kisses to her stomach, holds her hips down with strong, gentle hands as she drags her mouth lower, lower, until Alex is fevered and gasping with it. Not even the way Michael strokes her face afterwards, tangles their legs together and proceeds to embark on a quest to learn the contours of Alex’s mouth.

They’re mostly dressed when Jesse Manes finds them but there’s no hiding what they’ve been doing.

It turns out the only things required to change Alex’s plans are a hammer and Michael Guerin’s screams.

*

Michael is a test-proven genius but she has no parents, sleeps in the back of her truck, and has a gnarled left hand. She lets the time on the UnM scholarship run out because she has to stay here in Roswell, has to play the sister that murdered three girls and forced her siblings to help cover it up. She tries for work everywhere; all they do is take one look at her out-of-control curls, no make-up, her dirty hoodie and scruffy jeans, before turning her away.

Eventually she convinces Sanders to let her work on cars, enduring the crude comments from male customers and the polite disbelief from the female ones. It takes a long time and a number of perfect tune-ups before anyone will believe she’s actually fixing the cars. She takes work out on the ranches as well; they’re less worried about that stuff as long as she turns up and does the job, and there’s no one out there to watch or judge her. One of the ranchers gives her a black Stetson after a particularly good week’s work.

Michael turns it over in her hands as she lies in the bed of her truck.

*

The first time Alex comes back to Roswell on leave, they manage two minutes of small talk before they’re in the front seat of Michael’s truck and Alex is grinding down on her as they kiss frantically.

“I have. A place.” Michael gasps out while Alex tries to fuck Michael’s mouth with her tongue. “I’ve got. A trailer.”

Alex pulls back in surprise. She looks Michael over in a way she hadn’t been able to in the bar, cataloguing the changes in her, the things that are the same. She’s a little rougher around the edges than the Michael who had kissed her in the Emporium and had touched her with soft fingertips as they lay together on the futon in the shed. The hat and the belt buckle are new too. Alex likes them.

“Okay,” she says, then slips her hand underneath the waist of Michael’s jeans, fingers seeking until she finds wet heat. Michael gasps and throws her head back, so Alex leans forward and latches onto her exposed neck with lips and teeth. “In a minute.”

*

When Alex Manes comes back to Roswell for good her hair is short, her piercings are closed up, she’s missing a leg and she’s still the hottest fucking thing Michael Guerin has ever had the privilege of laying her eyes on. She kisses Alex at the reunion because she can’t _not_ , not when Alex is wearing that red buttoned shirt and is staring back at her like she might have missed Michael as much as Michael missed her.

“I never look away, not really,” Michael says, all windswept curls and grease on her tight white shirt, like the last ten years never happened, like she’s not vibrating with hope and anticipation.

“What are you doing?” she asks, like she hadn’t come home and cut her nails the night of the reunion, like the first touch of Alex’s fingers past her lips doesn’t make her arch her back and gasp, like Alex’s mouth on her clit isn’t an immediate brand, a reminder that she’s only ever felt like this with one stubborn, beautiful person.

The weeks that follow are full of sweat-slick evenings and gasps in the dark of late night. Alex is always gone in the morning, making excuses until she doesn’t anymore, until Michael just starts pretending to be asleep when she leaves. Until she wakes to the golden-orange light bathing Alex’s tan shoulders, fingers sliding over her stomach and soft kisses pressing across her breasts.

“You stayed,” she says. She parts her lips to Alex’s wandering fingers, crowds her against the mattress and devours her mouth helplessly.

Michael’s never been annoyed by a visit from her sister, but she’ll never forget the way Isobel’s voice shatters the warmth of the airstream, or the look on Alex’s face as she rushes to put on her prosthetic and disappear from Michael’s arms again.

*

Jesse Manes thinks that his daughter is weak. He doesn’t expect her to seek him out. He especially doesn’t expect for her crutch to connect with his face.

She knows that all she has to do is find the leverage locked away in the Project Shepherd servers. All she has to do is use it to send her father away and then she’ll be free. She’ll be free to be with whoever she damn well pleases. She’s always been stubborn and determined; some ridiculous vendetta of her father’s against _aliens_ isn’t going to stop her.

And then Michael’s picture appears on the screen. _Terrorist threat level_.

As always, the only thing that can change Alex Manes’ plans is her father’s weapon of choice aimed at Michael Guerin.

*

In the desert, Michael kisses Maria DeLuca and she pulls back in surprise.

“You’re not gay,” she says.

“Bi,” Michael supplies, and that seems to be all that Maria needs.

“This never happened,” she says the next morning, then she frowns. “Not because you’re a woman.”

Michael scoffs and pulls her shirt on. “Great. Thanks DeLuca.”

*

“I wanna know who you are, Guerin,” Alex says, with words like _loved_ and _cosmic_ and _friends_ floating in the air between them. The look on Michael’s face as she stalks forward makes Alex’s knees want to buckle but she’s here to _talk_ dammit, not fall into bed like they usually do.

She’s grateful when Michael puts on a coat and they sit by the fire. She listens intently as Michael details her time in the system, talks about the drunk in Santa Fe and Alex has to bite back the urge to demand names and locations, to ask if it was more than just _hits_. Her heart breaks at _easier_ and then again at _vehicle_. Michael looks back at her with those honey-golden eyes and Alex tries not to throw up as she makes her way up the ladder and to her car. 

*

After everything, Michael kisses Maria at the bar but Maria takes Michael’s hands in hers and shakes her head gently.

“We can’t,” she says. “I can’t do that to Alex.”

“This has nothing to do with Alex,” Michael hisses, trying to hold back the wave of tears that have been building up since she woke up on Max’s floor with dried blood caked down her neck and no Noah, no Max.

Maria looks at her kindly. “This has everything to do with Alex,” she counters. “Let me be your _friend_ , Guerin. You look like you might need one.”

She does.

Maria lets Michael sob into her shoulder for ten minutes before she pulls back with a wet gasp.

“Fuck. Alex. I told her we’d talk.”

Maria stares at her for a moment before gesturing to the door. “What are you waiting for? Go!”

She presses a kiss to Maria’s cheek before she slips out of the Wild Pony.

*

The sight of her there, sitting in front of the trailer, settles the loose rattling that’s been inside her chest all day. The sight of her there in her leather jacket and tight jeans, hair loose instead of in a tight bun or ponytail, turns Michael’s stomach into molten honey.

“You waited,” she says, breathless as she approaches.

Alex watches her calculatingly before nodding. “I told you; no more walking away.”

She knows that she looks like a mess, even worse than she did last night when she’d found Alex waiting in the trailer. Alex’s gaze pauses on her newly healed hand. She doesn’t care. Michael reaches out for Alex, grabs her by the lapels of her jacket and pulls her in close. She pushes their foreheads together and hears Alex’s stuttered breath.

“We have a lot to talk about,” she says, but her arms are sliding around Michael’s waist and holding her tight.

Michael nods. She pushes their mouths together, too tired for anything but the press of lips. “Loads,” she agrees, heaving in a breath. “Come lie down with me?”

She can feel Alex hesitate but it only lasts a moment, then Alex is dragging her inside the airstream. They strip enough to be comfortable and then slip under the covers, legs entwined and arms wrapped around one another. Michael tells her about Noah, about the fight and about Max healing her hand. Alex’s response is to take Michael’s hand and bring it to her lips, pressing soft kisses to her knuckles. Tears prick at the corner of Michael’s eyes and she explains why she went to the Wild Pony. She feels the way Alex tenses but doesn’t let go of her hand.

“I love you, Michael,” she says, and Michael stops breathing. “I wanted to tell you that last night, after –” she doesn’t say _Caufield_ , but they both think it. “– but you seemed so…”

“Manic?”

“Distracted.” Alex throws her a look, then immediately looks down at their joined hands, brow furrowing in worry. “But if you don’t want – if this isn’t what you want…”

Michael laughs gently. She doesn’t mean to, but it feels so ridiculous for Alex to be the doubting party in this situation. She stops when she sees the look on Alex’s face.

“Of course I do. I love you,” Michael assures her, reaches up to slide the fingers of her free hand across Alex’s jaw. “Come on, Alex. All I ever wanted was you.”

Alex closes her eyes and Michael gives her a moment to breathe. It’s this learning more about each other thing that’s gonna get them through it, she knows. Things like letting Alex have a moment to adjust when Big Feelings are involved.

“Me too,” she admits, after a moment. “You know, you always were the only thing I couldn’t plan for, Guerin.”

“Sorry,” Michael mumbles.

Alex shakes her head. Smiles softly. “Don’t be. I’m not.”

They fall asleep like that, holding on to one another, foreheads pressed together.

Later, Michael will wake to the excruciating emptiness where Max used to occupy space in her mind, will answer the distressed call from Isobel, the panicked texts from Liz. Alex will listen, will peer up at her from the bed with laser-sharp focus as she explains why Rosa is now alive and Max is now dead. She’ll know that Alex is already piecing together a plan and that this time, it won’t involve walking away.


End file.
